Unilever: Product Discovery Powers Two-Week Factory Efficiency
A giant in need of better efficiency
Unilever is one of the world’s largest consumer goods companies, founded over 100 years ago. This is the story of how we proposed and ideated solutions for factory efficiency software at their Home Care branch.
The client approached Vinta with a critical challenge: their manufacturing facilities lacked real-time visibility into production slowdowns and equipment downtime. Without proper monitoring systems, undetected machine failures caused unexpected production halts, leading to extended repair times, delayed product deliveries, and revenue losses.
Through our Product Discovery service, Vinta ideated a scalable solution that combines advanced web development and UX practices. The result: comprehensive factory monitoring that enables immediate issue detection and faster response times.
Unilever's global presence
- Operations spanning 190 countries;
- A workforce of 128,000 employees;
- Network of 300 company-owned manufacturing facilities;
- Five distinct business divisions, with Home Care contributing 20% to total revenue;
- The strategic focus outlined in their 2023 annual report emphasizes accelerated growth, enhanced productivity, and operational simplification.
Challenge: From Local Success to LATAM-Wide Operations
Unilever sought to transform its production optimization system from a promising local experiment into a robust, enterprise-grade solution for its Home Care division across Latin America. While the initial proof-of-concept was successfully implemented in two Brazilian factories, it reached its technical limits as data volumes grew and operational complexity increased.
The mission was twofold: to replace the initial prototype with a highly usable system built from the ground up while ensuring it was thoroughly validated and seamlessly integrated with Unilever’s existing telemetry infrastructure. Additionally, this new platform needed to be readily deployable and scalable across LATAM factories.
Multilingual support was a core requirement from the start. While each factory operates in its local language, the system needed to accommodate users from different regions, allowing them to switch languages effortlessly for smooth cross-border collaboration. The internationalization process also encompassed adapting number formats, date formats, and other regional conventions to ensure a fully localized experience.
After thoroughly consulting Unilever to understand their vision and technical requirements, Vinta identified the Product Discovery Service as the appropriate approach to uncover the product's potential and provide a solid foundation for development. This methodology would facilitate the development of a scalable solution that addresses immediate needs while accommodating future growth demands.
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Transformation Process
Vinta partnered with Unilever Home Care Brazil's Innovation department, bringing together an expert team of a product manager, a product Designer, and a senior engineer. Within a focused two-week period, we transformed complex challenges into an elegant, budget-conscious prototype.
Our signature Product Discovery process guided the team through remote workshops, maximizing every interaction. Understanding the client's time constraints, we streamlined communication through strategic touchpoints while maintaining seamless collaboration.
The result? A crystal-clear project scope, laser-focused feature prioritization, and carefully mitigated development risks – all optimized to deliver maximum value within the allocated budget.
Balancing familiarity and optimization
Our Product Discovery process helped us minimize development risks through three key phases. First, we conducted targeted interviews with Unilever's key operators to understand their daily challenges and workflows. This direct contact revealed valuable insights about internal processes and company dynamics.
By understanding the actual user needs, we focused on solutions that minimize human error through intuitive design, reduce operational risks, and align with existing work practices. This approach allowed us to deliver maximum organizational value while respecting established workflows.
We made all the changes to ensure operators would not find the update jarring. Instead, they would perceive the new version as more intuitive and efficient. Additionally, a consistent interface was implemented to facilitate adoption by less tech-savvy users.
The second step involved documenting critical user workflows and identifying essential steps and decision points. This systematic journey mapping guided our feature prioritization and informed the prototype development, ensuring we built precisely what users required rather than what we assumed they wanted.
We talked to people who use the tool every day and found two important things:
- Core Challenge - Operators struggled to accurately track and classify plant events, whether through manual input or semi-automated systems;
- Essential Outcome - Complete and accurate loss reporting by shift end, with all events and no unresolved issues adequately documented.
The last step involved developing a development plan by mapping necessary integrations and modeling the software architecture to accommodate current and future needs. This activity generated a rich Tech Assessment, which we delivered to Unilever as part of the final output.
Reaching a scalable and user-centric solution
We developed a practical, cost-effective strategy to address critical system failures while enhancing user interaction. Through Product Discovery, we collaborated with stakeholders and users, resulting in system improvements that avoided additional development costs and promised future savings.
To strengthen the existing solution, we focused on these essential aspects:
- Unified Dashboard: Consolidated multiple screen workflows into a single, practical dashboard;
- Enhanced Ticket System: Rebuilt the ticketing system, optimizing for clarity;
- Reliable Data Handling: Built an automatic saving system that:
- Alert users to connectivity issues;
- Prevents data loss during server problems;
- Maintains data accuracy.
- Simplified Overall UX: Reduced complexity through:
- Straightforward form completion;
- Progress preservation during errors;
- Clear, logical interface design.
In a focused collaboration with Unilever, we transformed complex operational challenges into a precise digital solution implementation plan, establishing a clear path forward for their efficiency monitoring needs.
Deliverables & Next Steps
Implementation planning provides a flexible roadmap that addresses risks and requirements through strategically phased deliveries. This systematic approach optimizes operator adoption and seamlessly integrates with existing systems—a critical success factor for large-scale organizational change.
Furthermore, by embracing our discovery process, we came up with a forward-looking vision that extends beyond initial deployment phases. The roadmap encompasses global scalability across factories and regions while introducing advanced integrations, enhanced safety protocols, and proposed automation features. These improvements are designed to maximize return on investment by streamlining operations, minimizing human error, and improving overall system dependability.
We delivered a thought-out and rounded documentation, including:
- Workshop material, conclusions, and personas;
- Prototype focused on the primary persona's journeys;
- Tech assessment to take the development forth;
- Roadmap that considers effort, risk, team setup, and priority but still makes room for future decisions.
For the next step, Unilever will assemble a dedicated team of developers, designers, and a project manager to begin implementation. The roadmap will be refined and adapted following the project kickoff to address emerging product requirements and implementation challenges. To learn more about our development process, explore how Vinta creates and deploys MVPs.
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